ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the music performed in the early Japanese talkies and how it was incorporated into the film context. First, it considers how Western music was used in Japan’s earliest talkies. Second, it examines the tendency toward Westernization in soundtracks from the first half of the 1930s. Third, it discusses the reaction against the direct introduction of Western music, and it discusses attempts to establish a domestic style. The selection and use of music help to construct the modern space in Japanese cinema within a context of social and cultural modernization.
